“Me again,” Teddy said when Kevin answered.
“I’d love to ask about where you are and what you’re doing there, but even secure lines like this can have extra ears, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself.”
“Not your opinions about the video I sent, though,” Teddy said.
“These aren’t opinions. These are facts.”
“I appreciate your confidence in your abilities and knowledge.”
“What you sent me is something they call a deepfake video,” Kevin said.
“It looked very real to me and everyone who saw it,” Teddy said.
“That’s the ‘deep’ part of deepfake.”
“How do they create them? Is it animation? Artificial intelligence?”
“I’m not a video guy. I don’t know the hows and such of these things, but my sense is that most of it is composed of real video and then certain key elements, like faces, are replaced.”
“Like special effects in movies?” Teddy asked.
“Exactly. Until recently they’ve mostly been used to put famous actresses’ faces on other women’s bodies in adult movies, but now the bad guys are looking for ways to use them to bring down governments.”
“Can you tell me who made it?”
“Eventually.”
“I don’t have time for eventually. Eventually I can find out on my own. I call you when I need things right now.”
“I didn’t know that speed was the only thing I brought to the table,” Kevin said.
“Oh for crying out loud,” Teddy said.
“Sometimes you can’t rush quality.”
Teddy bit his tongue. He was confident he could find out what he needed without Kevin’s help, but it would take longer than Teddy was comfortable with, especially trying to do it in a foreign country he hadn’t been to for many years.
“I haven’t slept in a very long time. I apologize if I was harsh,” Teddy said.
“Why haven’t you been sleeping? Do you have insomnia?”
“I’ve been traveling a lot for work across different time zones and I keep getting called back into action. I’ll be fine and you’ll be fine. Just call me when you have more information on the video.”
“Fine.”
“Hey, if you didn’t have any answers then why’d you call?”
“To tell you that what you have is a deepfake video,” Kevin said.
“That’s it?”
“That’s huge. A video like this one isn’t just a goof cooked up by kids in a garage. It’s a big deal.”
“Okay,” Teddy said.
“There are only a few people who can do this kind of stuff with this level of realism, and they don’t ever do it for fun. They do it to cause massive harm. I’ll call back when I know more.”
9
When he got off the phone with Kevin Cushman, Teddy went back to the couch in the suite and sat down. He wanted to lie down and get some sleep so he was fresh for what needed to be done, but he couldn’t get Kevin’s warning out of his head. Teddy had assumed the video was an elaborate prank to go along with the typed note looking for protection money.
Protection rackets had long been a popular fundraising activity for low-level gangs, who’d blackmail business owners into paying money to protect themselves from attacks by the gang itself. But low-level gangs didn’t have the technological savvy to pull off something this complex, which made Teddy wonder what else was going on. What had Peter and Ben gotten themselves involved in?
Someone had specifically targeted them and had gone to the trouble to create this fake video that painted them as criminals. Even though people close to Peter and Ben knew the video was fake, it was so realistic that anyone else would have to doubt their innocence. Which made Teddy wonder if maybe Peter’s and Ben’s fathers were the true targets. Stone and Dino had collected enough enemies between them to fill out a rogues’ gallery — Teddy had been one of those enemies for a while — and both of them had built up impressive security networks to protect themselves. But maybe someone had seen Peter and Ben as easier targets with the same payoff of hurting Stone or Dino.
Teddy was upset he hadn’t had this information at dinner and found himself getting irrationally angry at Kevin again. He really needed to get some sleep before he either said something that would get him in trouble or ran into someone with Dale Gai’s skill set who really was intent on hurting him.
10
The driver stopped at the gate and wouldn’t take Millie any closer to the site because he said he didn’t have the right clearances. Millie suspected he was just being a jerk. Millie got out of the SUV, crawled under the gate, and took a few steps toward the construction site before turning back to see the SUV backing out of the drive and heading back toward the hotel. She sighed, then swore under her breath before walking the rest of the way to the heart of the site.
The stadium and field area were still under construction, but the attached building where the restaurants and suites would be housed was close to completion. Millie wandered the site, looking for a way into the finished part of the building. Eventually she found her way to an elevator that not only worked but went right to the top of the building and opened up on the owner’s suite where Arrow Donaldson was staring out at his city under construction.
“I guess you are more than a secretary,” Arrow said, bemused, when he turned to see Millie standing in his suite. “Did you walk all the way up here through the construction?”
“A flimsy gate and some scaffolding aren’t going to stop the CIA, Mr. Donaldson.”
“The CIA should have that carved into their headquarters, like the line about rain and snow for the post office.”
“Did you know that line isn’t even about the U.S. Postal Service?” Millie said.
“Oh really?”
“There is no official USPS motto. That line was paraphrased from a book about the Persian Wars that one of the architects of the post office in New York City read. It was about the Persian postal workers.”
“I bet you’ve had that in your back pocket for a while just waiting to use it on someone, haven’t you?”
“I’m in the intelligence service, Mr. Donaldson — I pick up a lot of information I find useful and interesting. Some of it has a natural place in conversation and the rest I keep to myself for my own purposes. But I never save anything just to use it to impress anyone.”
“I never said I was impressed,” Arrow said.
“Where’s Li Feng?”
“She’s safe.”
Millie walked closer to Arrow. She was stunned by how beautiful the area looked from where they were standing. Even more impressive than the actual view was the power that the view reflected. She felt like she was looking across the city as a god watching her subjects. That likely wasn’t a coincidence. As she turned to look at Arrow, she could see him basking in the power of the view as well. She cleared her head and turned her focus to the task at hand. She didn’t want to be seduced by the view or by Arrow’s facade.
“Li Feng isn’t your charge to protect,” Millie said.
“People have this idea of billionaires as disconnected from reality, hiring people to do everything for them while they hide out in their billionaire bubbles unaware of how the real world works. But that’s not me.”
Millie noticed he managed to mention two separate times that he was a billionaire in one sentence.
“Good for you. But Li Feng is a government witness to corruption and espionage, and I’ve been charged with her protection.”